Riffin' On Your Awful Town, As It Is

“And yet everything that is created does not rest in Me. Behold My mystic opulence! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities and although I am everywhere, I am not a part of this cosmic manifestation, for My Self is the very source of creation.” 9.5 Bhagavad Gita The Most Confidential Knowledge

Short and sweet, it’s all here. “Everything” “that is created”, it goes nearly without saying, is after a special kind of “rest” that is absolute/eternal. Our hierarchy of needs guarantees it, and the conventional ways of thinking about life and the afterlife is that these are what is left behind with the body, leaving our spirits more free than they ever have been once their bondage is gone (can you imagine not needing to act to ever increase or restore your sense of fulfillment, and instead being a creature utterly filled with bliss, still capable of action, and with a limitless amount of time to do as much? It’d be heaven…).

Until that moment of leaving the body behind, however, our “rest” comes, whether we are witting or unwitting of as much, from meaningful communion with Source achieved via action in our day to day lives. It is achieved temporarily, held for stretches of time here and there and then lost to certain degrees…and then re-achieved. This is the cycle of Samsara, of birth and re-birth. The resonance with the Absolute/the all-encompassing and Ideal Divine is a special type of consciousness that historically has been regarded by many names… “Christ consciousness”, “Krishna Consciousness” “Samadhi”…it sees you viewing your identity as entirely within the bounds of God (you are God, and always have been, without this disrespecting proper hierarchies in regards to respect to be given…you’re the part of God that worships the larger part of God, largely…but you also become it too…) and this is the special rupturing of the cycle, the rebirth that breaks the cycle of death and rebirth as the eternal never pass on; this is one area the afterlife, and the everlasting soul is in conventional Eastern frameworks…a lot of people misunderstand reincarnation and think there is no everlasting identity in the East; there is only one Truth, and spirituality/religion is there to express it.

So knowing that we’re hardwired to seek a satiation that can only be achieved by directly attempting to please the Transcendent… and hearing that “everything created” “does not rest in” that Transcendent inherently, what are we to do? It’s a clunky question, admittedly. What’s most important is that Krishna in this moment shows Arjuna something material/embodied, that is not “a part of this cosmic manifestation”. Let’s ignore that as much is a fallacy for a moment… while expressing “Behold my mystic opulence!”. We are being shown here a process by which that “Rest” that “everything that is created” needs enters the world for those who are devoid of it. It’s a “mystical” process.

(For theory heads, I’m not going to go into it/frame it in such terms in this entry, but yes, this is the “Transcendental abode” or “Krishna’s abode” that you sometimes hear about as a spiritual subject)

Earlier I said that it’s a fallacy to try to construe an internal vision, such as the vision of Krishna’s “Opulence” as not of this world because… Transcendentalists in particular are aware that you can’t keep a lid on anything. What is inside is in dialogue with what is outside and will have an effect on it, even if we think we are keeping it to ourselves. Our internal worlds are merely stimuli pushed on us by the universe to influence how we interact with the external world so…we are meat puppets.

Hilarious framings aside, this is pretty important. What’s really happening here is that a Yogi, a man of God, is receiving a mystical vision, and this is an act of God. This is a form of reprieve for the Yogi personally, the “Rest” or “Love/connectedness” the Yogi seeks as an individual, but it’s also, an example of Krishna’s “Opulence” and Opulence(s) associated with the Monotheistic God are rich in their ability to liberate people…lots and lots of people... Quickly and thoroughly, at times far far better than method even though such a statement makes no sense from a Transcendental method (how could anything be better than the Dharma/Truth...how could anything be Other than method?! Then again, wait until you see a volcano explode…)For the Yogi, this could amount to a vision of the life they will have as a man of God…something they can make a reality across time and make their life, utterly. But practically, this plays out on a much smaller scale, and is largely intuitive, merely helping this individual intuitively connect to Source so that they can offer personal advice/service/support to the suffering in a masterful fashion…in a fashion that they actually enlighten/liberate those suffering rather than merely addressing the specific form of suffering that is manifesting at that juncture, transforming their world drastically on the spot from one that is largely cold and dead to one that is deeply, deeply alive, and bustling with an abundant unfurling of the Lotus…

*Emulates that scene from Monty Python where they wheel the corpse cart through the village, banging a bell and chanting, “BRING OUT YE DEAD!” [it was a weekly body disposal service during a plague]*

But in all seriousness…the more lives lived… the more eternal souls there are “out there” that are technically everywhere, and within reach…that can be contracted practically, and who have agency over this world, the same way any of us have agency over anything…by the grace of God. Bring out yer dead… there will never be a shortage of perfect and all-pervading advice to tap into…never a shortage of transcendental labor to tap into…the entirety of human history is aligned once the confusion of the body/this life is left behind, and they’re moreso of an inclination to help out rather than just watch.

The culture of “the ancestors” was about this. As well as honoring specific memories. The idea that the memories of your loved ones will be the place you find your life guidance…that is everything. That is God honoring family and friendships above all else. That is by the grace of God too, but it is so deep that it wouldn’t be any other way and you can frame it in secular terms and have it be just as fulfilling/effective. By the grace of God.

Today’s passage, when stripped of mystical overtones and done in a crass way…merely relays that when we turn to God for solutions, we become a part of the very act of Messianic “creation”…we become a part of the process. But also too, we frame “creation” itself as a Messianic process, and come to realize why we were born and where any of this is heading/what life does to us. It’s to resonate at the level of identity with God, to realize you are One with All… and in doing so you break the cycle of rebirth (which is always broken within a single life, I believe), becoming the “Eternal” [because mechanically you changed your identity to define it as eternal, and this is how will-power is best used, btw…Buddhists say unless you view yourself as eternal you will get bombarded by spontaneous fits of suffering so…you gotta do it!].

Ironically, Krishna relays that he is not “part of this cosmic manifestation” and this is why many have to reach for him internally so as to begin the process of manifesting his abode externally in our immediate environment… but notice how this would amount to a bunch of people doing stuff that looks like just normal life stuff, but is actually spiritual devotees manifesting spiritual consequences with their actions upon the world. We could assume previous generations did this a bunch if Krishna is as all-encompassing as He claims… how much cold, dead stuff of the world was actually directly of God’s creation…your local bowling alley or eateries? Everyone has a dream…they call your life’s work “your calling” sometimes…it’s all just Him.

There would quickly arise a need to cultivate within the people of the world the eyes to see that most of material creation is a series of covenants passionate and amazing individuals had with their God….to see God in all, and have it actually be historically true/a practical perspective rather than some crazy woo woo 20 yr old hippie brat bastardization of how life really works. To see most of life as a dialogue between individuals and their God…to see it respectfully…to actually see the quiet things that we all know that we know, but that we never share with one another.

Frankly I don't care that the Lady of the Lake picked you, you still gotta win the people over.